THE photos of Yarm in Weekend Memories, in The Northern Echo, inspired John Lloyd in Darlington to send in this splendid picture of his mother’s stepfather, John Lamb, at the wheel of a Clement car in Bentley Wynd, Yarm.

The car was made in Mezieres in northern France in about 1904 at Gustave Clement's works. His company built cycles, motorcycles, automobiles, aeroplanes and airships until it was taken over by Citroen in 1922.

The car is a 9hp “tonneau” – an “open car” – in “green picked out with black lines”, registration J379 (J indicated that the car had been registered in Durham).

“Mr Lamb married my grandmother in 1925 and my mother, Dorothy Robson, who was then 23, was allowed to drive this car,” says John. “She told me that she was the first female driver in Yarm. She said it was very hard to drive as it was difficult on hills – usually someone had to push her up Leven Bank.” To be fair to the Clement, Leven Bank is one of the steepest banks in the district.

On her 25th birthday in 1927, Mr Lamb bought Dorothy a new Singer Junior car for £152 on the road – less £10 10s for the “old Clement car”, according to the bill. The Clement then hung around for many years in Matty Dobson’s garage until it was scrapped.

Mr Lamb was a watchmaker in Middlesbrough and a “commission agent” (a legal way of being a bookmaker before gambling was legal) in Stockton. He built his house, Greenabella, in Bentley Wynd in about 1902 on the site of a mill – he plucked the name from a farm in Billingham which was being lost to the chemical industry.

In the back seat are Mr Heaviside, senior and junior. Presumably, these are the millwrights behind the firm J Heaviside & Son, which worked out of a nearby mill in Bentley Wynd. Heaviside’s mill, in the shadow of the railway viaduct, is now flats, and may well have been where Wren's vinegar vats were made.

The Northern Echo: CLOSE UP: From our front cover picture, which is an aerial shot of Yarm in the 1950s – before motor cars clogged up the High Street. Above are the road and rail bridges with the vinegar brewery at the head of the road bridge and a tannery to the left of

Even if you don’t know Yarm, you will have noticed Bentley Wynd. It is the first wynd on the left as you drop into the town centre from the south – it is at the bottom of the aerial view of the town, pictured above, between the road and the railway. At its entrance onto the High Street is a large plot of land which has been empty for years – this was once Dobson’s garage and the last resting place of the Clement. A 20-bed boutique hotel is going up on the site.